System and method for tailoring an electronic digital assistant query as a function of captured multi-party voice dialog and an electronically stored multi-party voice-interaction template

ABSTRACT

An input audio signal is monitored at an electronic digital assistant of an electronic computing device. The assistant determines that the audio signal includes audio from multiple speaking parties, identifies first and second parties of the multiple parties and roles of the parties, accesses a database of multi-party interaction templates and selects, as a function of the roles of the parties, a particular multi-party interaction template that matches the roles, and then generates, based on a detected content of the audio signal and the particular multi-party interaction template, a database query to retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to content of the audio signal. The assistant then causes the query to be performed results of the query provided to the first party, the second party, a dispatcher or administrator associated with the parties, or a computer-aided-dispatch system associated with the parties.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Tablets, laptops, phones (e.g., cellular or satellite), mobile(vehicular) or portable (personal) two-way radios, and other mobilecomputing devices are now in common use by users, such as firstresponders (including firemen, police officers, and paramedics, amongothers), and provide such users and others with instant access toincreasingly valuable additional information and resources such asvehicle histories, arrest records, outstanding warrants, healthinformation, real-time traffic or other situational status information,and any other information that may aid the user in making a moreinformed determination of an action to take or how to resolve asituation, among other possibilities.

Many such mobile computing devices further comprise, or provide accessto, electronic digital assistants (or sometimes referenced as “virtualpartners”) that can provide the user thereof with valuable informationin an automated (e.g., without further user input) or semi-automated(e.g., with some further user input) fashion. The valuable informationprovided to the user can be based on explicit requests for suchinformation posed by the user via an input (e.g., such as a parsednatural language input or an electronic touch interface manipulationassociated with an explicit request) in which the electronic digitalassistant may reactively provide such requested valuable information, orcan be based on some other set of one or more context or triggers inwhich the electronic digital assistant may proactively provide suchvaluable information to the user absent any explicit request from theuser.

As some existing examples, electronic digital assistants such as Siriprovided by Apple, Inc.® and Google Now provided by Google, Inc.®, aresoftware applications running on underlying electronic hardware that arecapable of understanding natural language, and may complete electronictasks in response to user voice inputs, among other additional oralternative types of inputs. These electronic digital assistants mayperform such tasks as taking and storing voice dictation for futurereference and retrieval, reading a received text message or an e-mailmessage aloud, generating a text message or e-mail message reply,looking up requested phone numbers and initiating a phone call to arequested contact, generating calendar appointments and providingappointment reminders, warning users of nearby dangers such as trafficaccidents or environmental hazards, and providing many other types ofinformation in a reactive or proactive manner.

However, conventional electronic digital assistants are generallycapable of monitoring and responding to only a single voice query and/orrequestor at a time. Thus, there exists a need for an improved technicalmethod, device, and system for an electronic digital assistant tocomputationally process multiple party voice dialog in order to respondto, and aid in, increasingly complex situations and dialog.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying figures, where like reference numerals refer toidentical or functionally similar elements throughout the separateviews, which together with the detailed description below areincorporated in and form part of the specification and serve to furtherillustrate various embodiments of concepts that include the claimedinvention, and to explain various principles and advantages of thoseembodiments.

FIG. 1 is a system diagram illustrating a system for operating anelectronic digital assistant, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2 is a system diagram illustrating a plurality of communicationdevices of FIG. 1 that are associated with a talk group and that may belocated at varying locations, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3 is a device diagram showing a device structure of an electroniccomputing device for operating an electronic digital assistant, inaccordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 4 illustrates a flowchart setting forth process steps for operatingthe electronic digital assistant of FIGS. 1 and/or 3, in accordance withsome embodiments.

Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures areillustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily beendrawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements inthe figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help toimprove understanding of embodiments of the present invention.

The apparatus and method components have been represented whereappropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only thosespecific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments ofthe present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with detailsthat will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the arthaving the benefit of the description herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Disclosed is an improved technical method, device, and system for anelectronic digital assistant to computationally process capturedmulti-party voice dialog and generate a query and provide a response to,or supplemental information for, the captured multi-party voice dialogas a function of an electronically stored multi-party voice-interactiontemplate.

In one embodiment, a process for tailoring an electronic digitalassistant generated query as a function of a captured multi-party voicedialog and an electronically stored multi-party voice-interactiontemplate includes: monitoring, at an electronic processing device, aninput audio signal; determining, by the electronic processing device,that the input audio signal includes audio from multiple speakingparties; identifying, by the electronic processing device, a first partyof the multiple parties and identifying a role associated with the firstparty; identifying, by the electronic processing device, a second partyof the multiple parties and identifying a role associated with thesecond party; accessing, by the electronic processing device, a databaseof a plurality of multi-party interaction templates and selecting, as afunction of the identified roles of the first party and the secondparty, a particular multi-party interaction template from the pluralityof multi-party interaction templates that matches the identified rolesof the first party and the second party; generating, by the electronicprocessing device based on a detected content of the input audio signaland the selected particular multi-party interaction template, a databasequery to retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to thedetected content of the input audio signal; and causing, by theelectronic processing device, the database query to be performed andcausing, by the electronic processing device, results of the query to beprovided to one or more of the first party, the second party, adispatcher or administrator associated with the first or second parties,and a computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system associated with the first orsecond parties.

In a further embodiment, an electronic processing device for tailoringan electronic digital assistant generated query as a function of acaptured multi-party voice dialog and an electronically storedmulti-party voice-interaction template includes: a memory; atransceiver; and one or more processors configured to: monitor an inputaudio signal; determine that the input audio signal includes audio frommultiple speaking parties; identify a first party of the multipleparties and identifying a role associated with the first party; identifya second party of the multiple parties and identifying a role associatedwith the second party; access, via a local electronic storage or via thetransceiver, a database of a plurality of multi-party interactiontemplates and select, as a function of the identified roles of the firstparty and the second party, a particular multi-party interactiontemplate from the plurality of multi-party interaction templates thatmatches the identified roles of the first party and the second party;generate, based on a detected content of the input audio signal and theselected particular multi-party interaction template, a database queryto retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to the detectedcontent of the input audio signal; and cause the database query to beperformed and cause, via the transceiver, results of the query to beprovided to one or more of the first party, the second party, adispatcher or administrator associated with the first or second parties,and a computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system associated with the first orsecond parties.

Each of the above-mentioned embodiments will be discussed in more detailbelow, starting with example communication system and devicearchitectures of the system in which the embodiments may be practiced,followed by an illustration of processing steps for achieving theimproved technical method, device, and system for an electronic digitalassistant. Further advantages and features consistent with thisdisclosure will be set forth in the following detailed description, withreference to the figures.

1. Communication System and Device Structures

a. Communication System Structure

Referring now to the drawings, and in particular FIG. 1, a communicationsystem diagram illustrates a system 100 of devices including a first setof devices that a user 102 (illustrated in FIG. 1 as a first responderpolice officer) may wear, such as a primary battery-powered portableradio 104 used for narrowband and/or broadband direct-mode orinfrastructure communications, a battery-powered radio speakermicrophone (RSM) video capture device 106, a laptop 114 having anintegrated video camera and used for data applications such as incidentsupport applications, smart glasses 116 (e.g., which may be virtualreality, augmented reality, or mixed reality glasses, may include avideo camera, and/or may include a head-tracking and/or eye-trackingfunction), sensor-enabled holster 118, and/or biometric sensor wristband120. Although FIG. 1 illustrates only a single user 102 with arespective first set of devices, in other embodiments, the single user102 may include additional sets of same or similar devices, andadditional users (such as user 182) may be present with respectiveadditional sets of same or similar devices as user 102, as illustratedin FIG. 2. User 182 may be geographically proximate to (or notgeographically proximate to) user 182. Audio of users 102 and/or 182 maybe captured by devices owned, worn, or associated with user 102 or user182 as a function of proximity and device ownership.

System 100 may also include a vehicle 132 associated with the user 102(e.g., the user 102 illustrated as potentially alternatively sitting ina driver's seat position 122 of vehicle 132 in FIG. 1 instead ofstanding outside of it), or associated with a user 122 entirelydifferent and separate from user 102 (and user 182) but including a sameone or more devices and accessories (not illustrated in FIG. 1) as user102, having an integrated vehicular computing device 133, an associatedvehicular video camera 134 and/or microphone 135, a coupled vehiculartransceiver 136, and a head and/or eye-tracking device 139. AlthoughFIG. 1 illustrates only a single vehicle 132 with a respective singlevehicular computing device 133, single vehicular video camera 134 andsingle transceiver 136, in other embodiments, the vehicle 132 mayinclude additional same or similar computing devices, video camerasand/or transceivers, and additional vehicles may be present withrespective additional sets of computing devices, video cameras, and/ortransceivers.

Each of the portable radio 104, RSM video capture device 106, laptop114, and vehicular computing device 133 may be capable of directlywirelessly communicating via direct-mode wireless link(s) 142, and/ormay be capable of wirelessly communicating via a wireless infrastructureradio access network (RAN) 152 over respective wireless link(s) 140, 144and via corresponding transceiver circuits.

Many of the devices shown in FIG. 1 (such as the portable radio 104, theRSM video capture device 106, the laptop 114, the mobile communicationdevice 133, the infrastructure controller 156, dispatch console 158, andone or more computing devices in the cloud computing cluster 162) may bereferred to as communication devices (for example, communication devices200A, 200B, 200C shown in FIG. 2). Although FIG. 1 shows multiplecommunication devices associated with the user 102, in some embodiments,the communication system 100 includes communication devices of multipleusers.

For example, as shown in FIG. 2, multiple communication devices200A-200C may form a talk group 250 and may be dispersed across a widegeographic area 251. The communication device 200A may be associatedwith a first user located at a first location, the communication device200B may be associated with a second user located at a second location,and the communication device 200C may be associated with a third userlocated at a third location. The first, second, and third locations maybe geographically the same or different from one another.

Further, as shown in FIG. 2, the communication devices 200A, 200B, and200C are members of the same talk group, i.e., talk group 250. Althoughnot shown in FIG. 2, each of the communication devices 200A, 200B, 200Cmay also be associated with one or more talk groups other than the talkgroup 250.

In some embodiments, the communication devices 200A-200C communicatewith each other over the infrastructure RAN 152 and/or communicate witheach other directly as described herein. Similarly, other devices, suchas the dispatch console 158, may communicate with communication devices200A-200C of multiple users through the infrastructure RAN 152. In someembodiments, one or more users may have multiple associatedcommunication devices, for example, as shown in FIG. 1.

Referring back to FIG. 1, the portable radio 104, in particular, may beany mobile computing device used for infrastructure RAN or direct-modemedia (e.g., voice, audio, video, etc.) communication via a long-rangewireless transmitter and/or transceiver that has a transmitter transmitrange on the order of miles, e.g., 0.5-50 miles, or 3-20 miles (e.g., incomparison to a short-range transmitter such as a Bluetooth, Zigbee, orNFC transmitter) with other mobile computing devices and/or theinfrastructure RAN 152. The long-range transmitter may implement adirect-mode, conventional, or trunked land mobile radio (LMR) standardor protocol such as ETSI Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), a Project 25 (P25)standard defined by the Association of Public Safety CommunicationsOfficials International (APCO), Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), orother LMR radio protocols or standards. In other embodiments, the longrange transmitter may implement a Long Term Evolution (LTE),LTE-Advance, or 5G protocol including multimedia broadcast multicastservices (MBMS) or single site point-to-multipoint (SC-PTM) over whichan open mobile alliance (OMA) push to talk (PTT) over cellular(OMA-PoC), a voice over IP (VoIP), an LTE Direct or LTE Device toDevice, or a PTT over IP (PoIP) application may be implemented. In stillfurther embodiments, the long range transmitter may implement a Wi-Fiprotocol perhaps in accordance with an IEEE 802.11 standard (e.g.,802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g) or a WiMAX protocol perhaps operating inaccordance with an IEEE 802.16 standard.

In the example of FIG. 1, the portable radio 104 may form the hub ofcommunication connectivity for the user 102, through which otheraccessory devices such as a biometric sensor (for example, the biometricsensor wristband 120), an activity tracker, a weapon status sensor (forexample, the sensor-enabled holster 118), a heads-up-display (forexample, the smart glasses 116), the RSM video capture device 106,and/or the laptop 114 may communicatively couple.

In order to communicate with and exchange video, audio, and other mediaand communications with the RSM video capture device 106, laptop 114,and/or smart glasses 116, the portable radio 104 may contain one or morephysical electronic ports (such as a USB port, an Ethernet port, anaudio jack, etc.) for direct electronic coupling with the RSM videocapture device 106, laptop 114, and/or smart glasses 116 and/or maycontain a short-range transmitter (e.g., in comparison to the long-rangetransmitter such as a LMR or Broadband transmitter) and/or transceiverfor wirelessly coupling with the RSM video capture device 106, laptop114, and/or smart glasses 116. The short-range transmitter may be aBluetooth, Zigbee, or NFC transmitter having a transmit range on theorder of 0.01-100 meters, or 0.1-10 meters.

In other embodiments, the RSM video capture device 106, the laptop 114,and/or the smart glasses 116 may contain their own long-rangetransceivers and may communicate with one another and/or with theinfrastructure RAN 152 or vehicular transceiver 136 directly withoutpassing through portable radio 104.

The RSM video capture device 106, in particular, provides voicefunctionality features similar to a traditional RSM, including one ormore of acting as a remote microphone that is closer to the user's 102mouth, providing a remote speaker allowing play back of audio closer tothe user's 102 ear, and including a PTT switch or other type of PTTinput. The voice and/or audio recorded at the remote microphone may beprovided to the portable radio 104 for storage and/or analysis or forfurther transmission to other mobile communication devices or theinfrastructure RAN 152, or may be directly transmitted by the RSM videocapture device 106 to other mobile computing devices or to theinfrastructure RAN 152. The voice and/or audio played back at the remotespeaker may be received from the portable radio 104 or received directlyfrom one or more other mobile computing devices or the infrastructureRAN 152. The RSM video capture device 106 may include a separatephysical PTT switch 108 that functions, in cooperation with the portableradio 104 or on its own, to maintain the portable radio 104 and/or RSMvideo capture device 106 in a monitor only mode, and which switches thedevice(s) to a transmit-only mode (for half-duplex devices) or transmitand receive mode (for full-duplex devices) upon depression or activationof the PTT switch 108. The portable radio 104 and/or RSM video capturedevice 106 may form part of a group communications architecture thatallows a single mobile computing device to communicate with one or moregroup members (not shown) associated with a particular group of devicesat a same time.

Additional features may be provided at the RSM video capture device 106as well. For example, a display screen 110 may be provided fordisplaying images, video, and/or text to the user 102 or to someoneelse. The display screen 110 may be, for example, a liquid crystaldisplay (LCD) screen or an organic light emitting display (OLED) displayscreen. In some embodiments, a touch sensitive input interface may beincorporated into the display screen 110 as well, allowing the user 102to interact with content provided on the display screen 110. A soft PTTinput may also be provided, for example, via such a touch interface.

A video camera 112 may be further provided at the RSM video capturedevice 106, integrating an ability to capture images and/or video andstore the captured image data (for further analysis) or transmit thecaptured image data as an image or video stream to the portable radio104 and/or to other mobile computing devices or to the infrastructureRAN 152 directly. The video camera 112 and RSM remote microphone may beused, for example, for capturing audio and/or video of a field-of-viewassociated with the user 102, storing the captured audio and/or videodata for further analysis or transmitting the captured audio and/orvideo data as an audio and/or video stream to the portable radio 104and/or to other mobile computing devices or to the infrastructure RAN152 directly for further analysis. The RSM remote microphone may be anomni-directional or unidirectional microphone or array ofomni-directional or unidirectional microphones that may be capable ofidentifying a direction from which a captured sound emanated.

In some embodiments, the RSM video capture device 106 may be replacedwith a more limited body worn camera that may include the video camera112 and/or microphone noted above for capturing audio and/or video, butmay forego one or more of the features noted above that transform thebody worn camera into a more full featured RSM, such as the separatephysical PTT switch 108 and the display screen 110, and remotemicrophone functionality for voice communications in cooperation withportable radio 104.

The laptop 114, in particular, may be any wireless computing device usedfor infrastructure RAN or direct-mode media communication via along-range or short-range wireless transmitter with other mobilecomputing devices and/or the infrastructure RAN 152. The laptop 114includes a display screen for displaying a user interface to anoperating system and one or more applications running on the operatingsystem, such as a broadband PTT communications application, a webbrowser application, a vehicle history database application, a workflowapplication, a forms or reporting tool application, an arrest recorddatabase application, an outstanding warrant database application, amapping and/or navigation application, a health information databaseapplication, or other types of applications that may require userinteraction to operate. The laptop 114 display screen may be, forexample, an LCD screen or an OLED display screen. In some embodiments, atouch sensitive input interface may be incorporated into the displayscreen as well, allowing the user 102 to interact with content providedon the display screen. A soft PTT input may also be provided, forexample, via such a touch interface.

Front and/or rear-facing video cameras may be further provided at thelaptop 114, integrating an ability to capture video and/or audio of theuser 102 and/or a field of view substantially matching the user's 102,and store and/or otherwise process the captured video and/or audio forfurther analysis or transmit the captured video and/or audio as a videoand/or audio stream to the portable radio 104, other mobile computingdevices, and/or the infrastructure RAN 152 for further analysis.

The smart glasses 116 may include a digital imaging device, a computingdevice, a short-range and/or long-range transceiver device, and/or aprojecting device. The smart glasses 116 may maintain a bi-directionalcommunications connection with the portable radio 104 and provide analways-on or on-demand video feed pointed in a direction of the user's102 gaze via the digital imaging device, and/or may provide a personaldisplay via the projection device integrated into the smart glasses 116for displaying to its user information such as text, images, or videoreceived from the portable radio 104 or directly from the infrastructureRAN 152. In some embodiments, an additional user interface mechanismsuch as a touch interface or gesture detection mechanism may be providedat the smart glasses 116 that allows the user 102 to interact with thedisplay elements displayed on the smart glasses 116 or projected intothe user's 102 eyes, or to modify operation of the digital imagingdevice, while in other embodiments, a display and input interface at theportable radio 104 may be provided for interacting with smart glasses116 content and modifying operation of the digital imaging device, amongother possibilities.

The smart glasses 116 may provide a virtual reality interface in which acomputer-simulated reality electronically replicates an environment withwhich the user 102 may interact, may provide an augmented realityinterface in which a direct or indirect view of real-world environmentsin which the user is currently disposed are augmented, i.e.,supplemented, by additional computer-generated sensory input such assound, video, images, graphics, GPS data, or other information, or mayprovide a mixed reality interface in which electronically generatedobjects are inserted in a direct or indirect view of real-worldenvironments in a manner such that they may co-exist and interact inreal time with the real-world environment and real world objects.

The sensor-enabled holster 118 may be an active (powered) or passive(non-powered) sensor that maintains and/or provides state informationregarding a weapon or other item normally disposed within the user's 102sensor-enabled holster 118. The sensor-enabled holster 118 may detect achange in state (presence to absence) and/or an action (removal)relative to the weapon normally disposed within the sensor-enabledholster 118. The detected change in state and/or action may be reportedto the portable radio 104 via its short-range transceiver. In someembodiments, the sensor-enabled holster 118 may also detect whether thefirst responder's hand is resting on the weapon even if it has not yetbeen removed from the holster and provide such information to portableradio 104. Other possibilities exist as well.

The biometric sensor wristband 120 may be an electronic device fortracking an activity of the user 102 or a health status of the user 102,and may include one or more movement sensors (such as an accelerometer,magnetometer, and/or gyroscope) that may periodically or intermittentlyprovide to the portable radio 104 indications of orientation, direction,steps, acceleration, and/or speed, and indications of health such as oneor more of a captured heart rate, a captured breathing rate, and acaptured body temperature of the user 102, perhaps accompanying otherinformation. In some embodiments, the biometric sensor wristband 120 mayinclude its own long-range transceiver and may communicate with othercommunication devices and/or with the infrastructure RAN 152 orvehicular transceiver 136 directly without passing through portableradio 104.

An accelerometer is a device that measures acceleration. Single andmulti-axis models are available to detect magnitude and direction of theacceleration as a vector quantity, and can be used to sense orientation,acceleration, vibration shock, and falling. A gyroscope is a device formeasuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles ofconservation of angular momentum. One type of gyroscope, amicroelectromechanical system (MEMS) based gyroscope, useslithographically constructed versions of one or more of a tuning fork, avibrating wheel, or resonant solid to measure orientation. Other typesof gyroscopes could be used as well. A magnetometer is a device used tomeasure the strength and/or direction of the magnetic field in thevicinity of the device, and can be used to determine a direction inwhich a person or device is facing.

The heart rate sensor may use electrical contacts with the skin tomonitor an electrocardiography (EKG) signal of its wearer, or may useinfrared light and imaging device to optically detect a pulse rate ofits wearer, among other possibilities.

A breathing rate sensor may be integrated within the sensor wristband120 itself, or disposed separately and communicate with the sensorwristband 120 via a short range wireless or wired connection. Thebreathing rate sensor may include use of differential capacitivecircuits or capacitive transducers to measure chest displacement andthus breathing rates. In other embodiments, a breathing sensor maymonitor a periodicity of mouth and/or nose-exhaled air (e.g., using ahumidity sensor, temperature sensor, capnometer or spirometer) to detecta respiration rate. Other possibilities exist as well.

A body temperature sensor may include an electronic digital or analogsensor that measures a skin temperature using, for example, a negativetemperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor or a resistive temperaturedetector (RTD), may include an infrared thermal scanner module, and/ormay include an ingestible temperature sensor that transmits aninternally measured body temperature via a short range wirelessconnection, among other possibilities.

Although the biometric sensor wristband 120 is shown in FIG. 1 as abracelet worn around the wrist, in other examples, the biometric sensorwristband 120 may additionally and/or alternatively be worn aroundanother part of the body, or may take a different physical formincluding an earring, a finger ring, a necklace, a glove, a belt, orsome other type of wearable, ingestible, or insertable form factor.

The portable radio 104, RSM video capture device 106, laptop 114, smartglasses 116, sensor-enabled holster 118, and/or biometric sensorwristband 120 may form a personal area network (PAN) via correspondingshort-range PAN transceivers, which may be based on a Bluetooth, Zigbee,or other short-range wireless protocol having a transmission range onthe order of meters, tens of meters, or hundreds of meters.

The portable radio 104 and/or RSM video capture device 106 (or any otherdevice in FIG. 1 for that matter) may each include a locationdetermination device integrated with or separately disposed butcommunicably coupled to the portable radio 104 and/or RSM 106 and/or inrespective receivers, transmitters, or transceivers of the portableradio 104 and RSM 106 for determining a location of the portable radio104 and RSM 106. The location determination device may be, for example,a global positioning system (GPS) receiver or wireless triangulationlogic using a wireless receiver or transceiver and a plurality ofwireless signals received at the wireless receiver or transceiver fromdifferent locations, among other possibilities. The locationdetermination device may also include an orientation sensor fordetermining an orientation that the device is facing. Each orientationsensor may include a gyroscope and/or a magnetometer. Other types oforientation sensors could be used as well. The location (and/ororientation) can then be stored locally and/or transmitted via thetransmitter or transceiver to other computing devices and/or to theinfrastructure RAN 152.

The vehicle 132 may include the vehicular computing device 133, thevehicular video camera 134 and/or microphone 135, the vehiculartransceiver 136, and the head and/or eye-tracking device 139, all ofwhich may be coupled to one another via a wired and/or wireless vehiclearea network (VAN), perhaps along with other sensors physically orcommunicatively coupled to the vehicle 132. The vehicular transceiver136 may include a long-range transceiver for directly wirelesslycommunicating with mobile computing devices such as the portable radio104, the RSM 106, and the laptop 114 via wireless link(s) 142 and/or forwirelessly communicating with the infrastructure RAN 152 via wirelesslink(s) 144. The vehicular transceiver 136 may further include ashort-range wireless transceiver or wired transceiver for communicablycoupling between the vehicular computing device 133 and/or the vehicularvideo camera 134 in the VAN. The vehicular computing device 133 may, insome embodiments, include the vehicular transceiver 136 and/or thevehicular video camera 134 integrated therewith, and may operate tostore and/or process video and/or audio produced by the video camera 134and/or transmit the captured video and/or audio as a video and/or audiostream to the portable radio 104, other mobile computing devices, and/orthe infrastructure RAN 152 for further analysis. The omni-directional orunidirectional microphone 135, or an array thereof, may be integrated inthe video camera 134 and/or at the vehicular computing device 133 (oradditionally or alternatively made available at a separate location ofthe vehicle 132) and communicably coupled to the vehicular computingdevice 133 and/or vehicular transceiver 136 for capturing audio andstoring, processing, and/or transmitting the audio in a same or similarmanner as set forth above with respect to the RSM 106.

The vehicle 132 may be a human-operable vehicle, or may be aself-driving vehicle operable under control of vehicular computingdevice 133 perhaps in cooperation with video camera 134 (which mayinclude a visible-light camera, an infrared camera, a time-of-flightdepth camera, and/or a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) device).Command information and/or status information such as location and speedmay be exchanged with the self-driving vehicle via the VAN and/or thePAN (when the PAN is in range of the VAN or via the VAN's infrastructureRAN link).

The vehicle 132 and/or transceiver 136, similar to the portable radio104 and/or respective receivers, transmitters, or transceivers thereof,may include a location (and/or orientation) determination deviceintegrated with or separately disposed in the vehicular computing device133 and/or transceiver 136 for determining (and storing and/ortransmitting) a location (and/or orientation) of the vehicle 132.

In some embodiments, instead of a vehicle 132, a land, air, orwater-based drone with same or similar audio and/or video andcommunications capabilities and same or similar self-navigatingcapabilities as set forth above may be disposed, and may similarlycommunicate with the user's 102 PAN and/or with the infrastructure RAN152 to support the user 102 in the field.

The VAN may communicatively couple with the PAN disclosed above when theVAN and the PAN come within wireless transmission range of one another,perhaps after an authentication takes place there between, and one ofthe VAN and the PAN may provide infrastructure communications to theother, depending on the situation and the types of devices in the VANand/or PAN and may provide interoperability and communication linksbetween devices (such as video cameras) and sensors within the VAN andPAN.

Although the RSM 106, the laptop 114, the smart glasses 116, and thevehicle 132 are illustrated in FIG. 1 as providing example video camerasand/or microphones for use in capturing audio and/or video streams,other types of cameras and/or microphones could be used as well,including but not limited to, fixed or pivotable video cameras securedto lamp posts, automated teller machine (ATM) video cameras, other typesof body worn cameras such as head-mounted cameras, other types ofvehicular cameras such as roof-mounted cameras, or other types of audioand/or video recording devices accessible via a wired or wirelessnetwork interface same or similar to that disclosed herein.

Infrastructure RAN 152 is a radio access network that provides for radiocommunication links to be arranged within the network between aplurality of user terminals. Such user terminals may be mobile and maybe known as ‘mobile stations’ or ‘mobile devices,’ and may include anyone or more of the electronic computing devices illustrated in FIG. 1,among other possibilities. At least one other terminal, e.g. used inconjunction with mobile devices, may be a fixed terminal, e.g. a basestation, eNodeB, repeater, and/or access point. Such a RAN typicallyincludes a system infrastructure that generally includes a network ofvarious fixed terminals, which are in direct radio communication withthe mobile devices. Each of the fixed terminals operating in the RAN mayhave one or more transceivers which may, for example, serve mobiledevices in a given region or area, known as a ‘cell’ or ‘site’, by radiofrequency (RF) communication. The mobile devices that are in directcommunication with a particular fixed terminal are said to be served bythe fixed terminal. In one example, all radio communications to and fromeach mobile device within the RAN are made via respective serving fixedterminals. Sites of neighboring fixed terminals may be offset from oneanother and may provide corresponding non-overlapping or partially orfully overlapping RF coverage areas.

Infrastructure RAN 152 may operate according to an industry standardwireless access technology such as, for example, an LTE, LTE-Advance, or5G technology over which an OMA-PoC, a VoIP, an LTE Direct or LTE Deviceto Device, or a PoIP application may be implemented. Additionally oralternatively, infrastructure RAN 152 may implement a WLAN technologysuch as Wi-Fi perhaps operating in accordance with an IEEE 802.11standard (e.g., 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g) or such as a WiMAX perhapsoperating in accordance with an IEEE 802.16 standard.

Infrastructure RAN 152 may additionally or alternatively operateaccording to an industry standard LMR wireless access technology suchas, for example, the P25 standard defined by the APCO, the TETRAstandard defined by the ETSI, the dPMR standard also defined by theETSI, or the DMR standard also defined by the ETSI. Because thesesystems generally provide lower throughput than the broadband systems,they are sometimes designated as narrowband RANs.

Communications in accordance with any one or more of these protocols orstandards, or other protocols or standards, may take place over physicalchannels in accordance with one or more of a TDMA (time divisionmultiple access), FDMA (frequency divisional multiple access), OFDMA(orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access), or CDMA (codedivision multiple access) technique.

OMA-PoC, in particular and as one example of an infrastructure broadbandwireless application, enables familiar PTT and “instant on” features oftraditional half-duplex mobile devices, but uses mobile devicesoperating over modern broadband telecommunications networks. UsingOMA-PoC, wireless mobile devices such as mobile telephones and notebookcomputers can function as PTT half-duplex mobile devices fortransmitting and receiving. Other types of PTT models and multimediacall models (MMCMs) could be used as well.

Floor control in an OMA-PoC session is generally maintained by a PTTserver that controls communications between two or more wireless mobiledevices. When a user of one of the mobile devices keys a PTT button, arequest for permission to speak in the OMA-PoC session is transmittedfrom the user's mobile device to the PTT server using, for example, areal-time transport protocol (RTP) message. If no other users arecurrently speaking in the PoC session, an acceptance message istransmitted back to the user's mobile device and the user can then speakinto a microphone of the device. Using standardcompression/decompression (codec) techniques, the user's voice isdigitized and transmitted using discrete auditory data packets (e.g.,together which form an auditory data stream over time), such asaccording to RTP and internet protocols (IP), to the PTT server. The PTTserver then transmits the auditory data packets to other users of thePoC session (e.g., to other mobile devices in the group of mobiledevices or talkgroup to which the user is subscribed), using forexample, one or more of a unicast, point to multipoint, or broadcastcommunication technique.

Infrastructure narrowband LMR wireless systems, on the other hand, mayoperate in either a conventional or trunked configuration. In eitherconfiguration, a plurality of mobile devices is partitioned intoseparate groups of mobile devices.

In a conventional narrowband radio system, each mobile device in a groupis selected to a particular radio channel (frequency or frequency & timeslot) for communications associated with that mobile device's group.Thus, each group is served by one channel, and multiple groups may sharethe same single frequency (in which case, in some embodiments, group IDsmay be present in the group data to distinguish between groups using thesame shared frequency).

In contrast, a trunked narrowband radio system and its mobile devicesuse a pool of traffic channels for virtually an unlimited number ofgroups of mobile devices (e.g., talkgroups). Thus, all groups are servedby all channels. The trunked radio system works to take advantage of theprobability that not all groups need a traffic channel for communicationat the same time. When a member of a group requests a call on a controlor rest channel on which all of the mobile devices at a site idleawaiting new call notifications, in one embodiment, a call controllerassigns a separate traffic channel for the requested group call, and allgroup members move from the assigned control or rest channel to theassigned traffic channel for the group call. In another embodiment, whena member of a group requests a call on a control or rest channel, thecall controller may convert the control or rest channel on which themobile devices were idling to a traffic channel for the call, andinstruct all mobile devices that are not participating in the new callto move to a newly assigned control or rest channel selected from thepool of available channels. With a given number of channels, a muchgreater number of groups can be accommodated in a trunked radio systemas compared with a conventional radio system.

Group calls may be made between wireless and/or wireline participants inaccordance with either a narrowband or a broadband protocol or standard.Group members for group calls may be statically or dynamically defined.That is, in a first example, a user or administrator working on behalfof the user may indicate to the switching and/or radio network (perhapsat a call controller, PTT server, zone controller, or mobile managemententity (MME), base station controller (BSC), mobile switching center(MSC), site controller, Push-to-Talk controller, or other networkdevice) a list of participants of a group at the time of the call or inadvance of the call. The group members (e.g., mobile devices) could beprovisioned in the network by the user or an agent, and then providedsome form of group identity or identifier, for example. Then, at afuture time, an originating user in a group may cause some signaling tobe transmitted indicating that he or she wishes to establish acommunication session (e.g., group call) with each of the pre-designatedparticipants in the defined group. In another example, mobile devicesmay dynamically affiliate with a group (and also disassociate with thegroup) perhaps based on user input, and the switching and/or radionetwork may track group membership and route new group calls accordingto the current group membership.

In some instances, broadband and narrowband systems may be interfacedvia a middleware system that translates between a narrowband PTTstandard protocol (such as P25) and a broadband PTT standard protocol(such as OMA-PoC). Such intermediate middle-ware may include amiddleware server for performing the translations and may be disposed inthe cloud, disposed in a dedicated on-premises location for a clientwishing to use both technologies, or disposed at a public carriersupporting one or both technologies. For example, and with respect toFIG. 1, such a middleware server may be disposed in infrastructure RAN152 at controller 156 or at a separate cloud computing cluster 162communicably coupled to controller 156 via internet protocol (IP)network 160, among other possibilities.

The infrastructure RAN 152 is illustrated in FIG. 1 as providingcoverage for the portable radio 104, RSM video capture device 106,laptop 114, smart glasses 116, and/or vehicle transceiver 136 via asingle fixed terminal 154 coupled to a single controller 156 (e.g.,radio controller, call controller, PTT server, zone controller, MME,BSC, MSC, site controller, Push-to-Talk controller, or other networkdevice) and including a dispatch console 158 operated by a dispatcher.In other embodiments, additional fixed terminals and additionalcontrollers may be disposed to support a larger geographic footprintand/or a larger number of mobile devices.

The controller 156 illustrated in FIG. 1, or some other backendelectronic computing device existing on-premises or in the remote cloudcompute cluster 162 accessible via the IP network 160 (such as theInternet), may additionally or alternatively operate as a back-endelectronic digital assistant, a back-end audio and/or video processingelectronic computing device, and/or a remote cloud-based storage deviceconsistent with the remainder of this disclosure.

The IP network 160 may comprise one or more routers, switches, LANs,WLANs, WANs, access points, or other network infrastructure, includingbut not limited to, the public Internet. The cloud compute cluster 162may be comprised of a plurality of computing devices, such as the oneset forth in FIG. 3, one or more of which may be executing none, all, ora portion of an electronic digital assistant service, sequentially or inparallel, across the plurality of computing devices. The plurality ofcomputing devices comprising the cloud compute cluster 162 may begeographically co-located or may be separated by inches, meters, ormiles, and inter-connected via electronic and/or optical interconnects.Although not shown in FIG. 1, one or more proxy servers orload-balancing servers may control which one or more computing devicesperform any part or all of the electronic digital assistant function.

System 100 may additionally include a physical street sign 170, such asan intersection sign, that includes alphanumeric text and/or images thatmay identify, for example, two cross streets meeting one another at ornear the location of the street sign 170. In other embodiments, variousdifferent types of signs, including physical or dynamically updateableelectronic signs indicating construction updates, detours, events,traffic updates, advertisements, logos, building addresses, or otherinformation may be implemented as well. The license plate 172 may be aphysical or electronic display attached to the vehicle 132 that includesa unique identifier to uniquely identify (e.g., within a local region orarea, county, city, state, or country) the vehicle 132 and may be linkedto other information such as an owner, driver, employee, licensee,company, insurance information, traffic infraction information, makeand/or model of the vehicle, or other information associated with thevehicle. The street sign 170 and the license plate 172 are merelyexample alphanumeric elements on graphical objects that will bedescribed in more detail below with respect to the process 400 of FIG.4.

Finally, although FIG. 1 describes a communication system 100 generallyas a public safety communication system including a user 102 generallydescribed as a police officer and vehicle 132 generally described as apolice cruiser, in other embodiments, the communications system 100 mayadditionally or alternatively be a retail communications systemincluding a user 102 that may be an employee of a retailer and a vehicle132 that may be a vehicle for use by the user 102 in furtherance of theemployee's retail duties (e.g., a shuttle or self-balancing scooter). Inother embodiments, the communications system 100 may additionally oralternatively be a warehouse communications system including a user 102that may be an employee of a warehouse and a vehicle 132 that may be avehicle for use by the user 102 in furtherance of the employee's retailduties (e.g., a forklift).

In still further embodiments, the communications system 100 mayadditionally or alternatively be a private security communicationssystem including a user 102 that may be an employee of a privatesecurity company and a vehicle 132 that may be a vehicle for use by theuser 102 in furtherance of the private security employee's duties (e.g.,a private security vehicle or motorcycle). In even further embodiments,the communications system 100 may additionally or alternatively be amedical communications system including a user 102 that may be a doctoror nurse of a hospital and a vehicle 132 that may be a vehicle for useby the user 102 in furtherance of the doctor or nurse's duties (e.g., amedical gurney or ambulance). In a last example embodiment, thecommunications system 100 may additionally or alternatively be a heavymachinery communications system including a user 102 that may be aminer, driller, or extractor at a mine, oil field, or precious metal orgem field and a vehicle 132 that may be a vehicle for use by the user102 in furtherance of the miner, driller, or extractor's duties (e.g.,an excavator, bulldozer, crane, or front loader). Other possibilitiesexist as well.

b. Device Structure

FIG. 3 sets forth a schematic diagram that illustrates a communicationdevice 200 according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. Thecommunication device 200 may be, for example, embodied in the portableradio 104, the RSM video capture device 106, the laptop 114, the mobilecommunication device 133, the infrastructure controller 156, thedispatch console 158, one or more computing devices in the cloudcomputing cluster 162, or some other communication device notillustrated in FIG. 1, and/or may be a distributed communication deviceacross two or more of the foregoing (or multiple of a same type of oneof the foregoing) and linked via a wired and/or wireless communicationlink(s). In some embodiments, the communication device 200 (for example,the portable radio 104) may be communicatively coupled to other devicessuch as the sensor-enabled holster 118 as described above. In suchembodiments, the combination of the portable radio 104 and thesensor-enabled holster 118 may be considered a single communicationdevice 200.

While FIG. 3 may represent the communication devices 200A-200C describedabove with respect to FIGS. 1 and 2, depending on the type of thecommunication device, the communication device 200 may include fewer oradditional components in configurations different from that illustratedin FIG. 3. For example, in some embodiments, the communication device200 acting as the infrastructure controller 156 of FIG. 1 may notinclude one or more of the screen 305, microphone 320, imaging device321, and speaker 322. As another example, in some embodiments, thecommunication device 200 acting as the portable radio 104 of the RSMvideo capture device 106 of FIG. 1 may further include a locationdetermination device (for example, a global positioning system (GPS)receiver) as explained above. Other combinations are possible as well.

As shown in FIG. 3, the communication device 300 includes acommunications unit 302 coupled to a common data and address bus 317 ofa processing unit 303. The communication device 300 may also include oneor more input devices (for example, keypad, pointing device,touch-sensitive surface, button, a microphone 320, an imaging device321, and/or another input device 306) and an electronic display screen305 (which, in some embodiments, may be a touch screen and thus alsoacts as an input device), each coupled to be in communication with theprocessing unit 303.

The microphone 320 may be present for capturing audio from a user and/orother environmental or background audio that is further processed byprocessing unit 303 in accordance with the remainder of this disclosureand/or is transmitted as voice or audio stream data, or as acousticalenvironment indications, by communications unit 302 to other portableradios and/or other communication devices. The imaging device 321 mayprovide video (still or moving images) of an area in a field of view ofthe communication device 300 for further processing by the processingunit 303 and/or for further transmission by the communications unit 302.A speaker 322 may be present for reproducing audio that is decoded fromvoice or audio streams of calls received via the communications unit 302from other portable radios, from digital audio stored at thecommunication device 300, from other ad-hoc or direct mode devices,and/or from an infrastructure RAN device, or may playback alert tones orother types of pre-recorded audio.

The processing unit 303 may include a code Read Only Memory (ROM) 312coupled to the common data and address bus 317 for storing data forinitializing system components. The processing unit 303 may furtherinclude an electronic processor 313 (for example, a microprocessor oranother electronic device) coupled, by the common data and address bus317, to a Random Access Memory (RAM) 204 and a static memory 316.

The communications unit 302 may include one or more wired and/orwireless input/output (I/O) interfaces 309 that are configurable tocommunicate with other communication devices, such as the portable radio104, the laptop 114, the wireless RAN 152, and/or the mobilecommunication device 133.

For example, the communications unit 302 may include one or morewireless transceivers 308, such as a DMR transceiver, a P25 transceiver,a Bluetooth transceiver, a Wi-Fi transceiver perhaps operating inaccordance with an IEEE 802.11 standard (for example, 802.11a, 802.11b,802.11g), an LTE transceiver, a WiMAX transceiver perhaps operating inaccordance with an IEEE 802.16 standard, and/or another similar type ofwireless transceiver configurable to communicate via a wireless radionetwork.

The communications unit 302 may additionally or alternatively includeone or more wireline transceivers 308, such as an Ethernet transceiver,a USB transceiver, or similar transceiver configurable to communicatevia a twisted pair wire, a coaxial cable, a fiber-optic link, or asimilar physical connection to a wireline network. The transceiver 308is also coupled to a combined modulator/demodulator 310.

The electronic processor 313 has ports for coupling to the displayscreen 305, the microphone 320, the imaging device 321, the other inputdevice 306, and/or the speaker 322. Static memory 316 may storeoperating code 325 for the electronic processor 313 that, when executed,performs one or more of the steps set forth in FIG. 4 and theaccompanying text. The static memory 316 may comprise, for example, ahard-disk drive (HDD), an optical disk drive such as a compact disk (CD)drive or digital versatile disk (DVD) drive, a solid state drive (SSD),a tape drive, a flash memory drive, or a tape drive, and the like.

2. Processes for Tailoring an Electronic Digital Assistant Query as aFunction of a Captured Multi-party Voice Dialog and an ElectronicallyStored Multi-party Voice-Interaction Template

In some embodiments, an individual component and/or a combination ofindividual components of the system 100 may be referred to as anelectronic computing device that implements an electronic digitalassistant as mentioned above. For example, the electronic computingdevice may be a single electronic processor (for example, the electronicprocessor 313 of the portable radio 104). In other embodiments, theelectronic computing device includes multiple electronic processorsdistributed remotely from each other. For example, the electroniccomputing device may be implemented on a combination of at least two ofthe electronic processor 313 of the portable radio 104, the electronicprocessor 213 of the infrastructure controller 156, and the electronicprocessor 313 of a back-end device in the cloud computing cluster 162accessible via the IP network 160.

To use the electronic digital assistant implemented by the electroniccomputing device, the user 102 (and/or other user 182, users of devices200A-C, etc.) may, for example, provide an audio dialog and/or an audioinquiry that is received by the microphone 320 of the communicationdevice 300. In accordance with some embodiments, the audio dialog and/orinquiry received at the microphone is further transmitted as audiocommunications on a talk group channel for receipt by other users in atalk group. The electronic computing device receives signalsrepresentative of the audio dialog and/or inquiry (directly from themicrophone 320 or through monitoring audio communications on the talkgroup channel) and analyzes the signals to determine the intent and/orcontent of the audio inquiry. For example, the electronic computingdevice may include a natural language processing (NLP) engine configuredto determine the intent and/or content of the audio inquiry. Theelectronic computing device may also be configured to determine aresponse to the audio inquiry (for example, by retrieving stored data orby requesting data from a database such as the cloud computer cluster162) and provide the response to an output device of the communicationdevice 300 (for example, one or more of the speaker 322 via a generatedaudio response and the screen 305 via a generated text, graphic, and/orvideo-based response). In other words, one or more of the communicationdevice 300, embodied in one or more of the communication devices of FIG.1, such as the portable radio 104, the infrastructure controller 156,and/or cloud computing cluster 162 may include a natural languageprocessing engine to analyze audio dialog and/or inquiries received fromcommunication device(s) 300 and provide responses to the audio inquiriesin the form of audio data, image data, text data, and/or functions toperform or actions to take.

Although an audio dialog and/or inquiry is described above, in someembodiments, the electronic computing device receives and responds toother types of dialog and queries. For example, the user 102 may submita text dialog or inquiry to the electronic computing device by typingthe text dialog or inquiry into a hard keyboard input device or a softkeyboard input provided on the screen 205 of the communication device200. As another example, the user 102 may use the imaging device 221 tocapture an image or video of an area and press a hard or soft key tosend the image or video to the electronic computing device to, forexample, allow the electronic computing device to identify an object inthe image or video. This non-audio content may, for example, also beprocessed and used in responding to or supplementing future dialogand/or queries.

In accordance with some embodiments, the electronic digital assistant isalso added to a talk group (for example, talk group 250) as a talk groupmember to monitor dialog and communications (as well as transmitcommunications) between communication devices 200A-200C that are membersof the communications group. When the electronic computing deviceimplementing the electronic digital assistant detects an audio inquiryor audio dialog, for example, a voice inquiry transmitted on a talkgroup channel by a particular talk group member, the electroniccomputing device implementing the electronic digital assistant processesthe audio inquiry and responds to the audio inquiry in accordance with aprocess 400 illustrated in FIG. 4. The dialog or inquiry may be aspecific inquiry transmitted on the talk group channel with the intentthat the electronic digital assistant would hear the inquiry and respond(e.g., a spoken instruction to the electronic digital assistant toperform a particular function or retrieve particular information), ormay dialog or a statement made from a first user to one or more otherusers (and/or responses thereto) where the electronic digital assistantdetermines it can extract a useful inquiry from the dialog orstatement(s) and proactively provide additional information, context, orbackground to the communication group and/or individual or sub-group ofusers in the communication group in accordance with this disclosure.

FIG. 4 illustrates a flow chart diagram of the process 400 performed bythe electronic computing device for tailoring an electronic digitalassistant query as a function of a captured multi-party voice dialog andan electronically stored multi-party voice-interaction template. While aparticular order of processing steps, message receptions, and/or messagetransmissions is indicated in FIG. 4 as an example, timing and orderingof such steps, receptions, and transmissions may vary where appropriatewithout negating the purpose and advantages of the examples set forth indetail throughout the remainder of this disclosure.

Process 400 begins at step 402, where an electronic digital assistantoperating at an electronic computing device monitors an input audiosignal. The input audio signal may include a single audio streamrepresenting audio of multiple parties captured via a single input audiotransducer/microphone (for example, where the electronic digitalassistant is implemented at an electronic computing device that is thesame device that captured the audio, or where the electronic digitalassistant is implemented at an electronic computing device that is atarget of a private call in which the audio stream is captured andtransmitted), may include a single audio stream representing anamalgamation of separate audio streams captured at separate input audiotransducers/microphones and combined at, for example, a group PTT serverbefore being provided to the electronic computing device (for example,where the electronic digital assistant is implemented at an electroniccomputing device that is added as a member to a talkgroup call), or mayinclude multiple audio streams representing separate audio streamscaptured at separate input audio transducers/microphones (for example,where the electronic digital assistant is implemented at an electroniccomputing device that is the group PTT server). Other combinations ofcapture locations and device network locations are possible as well.

At step 404, the electronic digital assistant operating at theelectronic computing device determines that the input audio signalincludes audio from multiple speaking parties. The electronic digitalassistant may determine that the input audio signal includes audio frommultiple speaking parties in a number of ways.

Where the input audio signal includes a single audio stream representingaudio of multiple parties captured via a single input audiotransducer/microphone, various speech processing parameters may be usedto identify and extract each speaker and their associated speech audiofrom the first audio content, such as distinguishing speakers based onone or more voice prosody characteristics (e.g., frequency/pitch ofvoice, rhythm, and/or loudness). Additionally or alternatively,identified differences in speaker gender, emotion, dialect, accent,and/or word complexity could be used to distinguish speakers. Stillfurther, an identified content of the audio stream (perhaps identifiedafter a voice to text conversion) that, for example, identifies questionand answer pairs may be used to distinguish speakers. Where available,video captured at a same time as the audio may be used to identify lipmovements (perhaps determined to correspond to the captured audio) andto distinguish speakers accordingly. In other embodiments, and where thecapture device that produced the single audio stream includes amicrophone array capable of identifying range and/or directioninformation relative to a source of audio, such range and/or directioninformation may be included in header information, embedded in a digitalor analog audio signal of the audio stream, embedded between data framesmaking up a digital encoding of the input audio signal, or provided viaa sideband mechanism (e.g., via some other communications channel) andmay be used to distinguish speakers (e.g., a threshold distance in rangeand/or direction may be used to presume different speakers).

Where the input audio signal includes a single audio stream representingan amalgamation of separate audio streams captured at separate inputaudio transducers/microphones and combined at, for example, a group PTTserver before being provided to the electronic computing device, any ofabove noted mechanisms set forth relative to the single audio streamfrom a single transducer/microphone source may be similarly use in thisinstance. Additionally or alternatively, the group PTT server may embedspeaker information in a header, in a digital or analog audio signal ofthe audio stream, between data frames making up a digital encoding ofthe input audio signal, or via a sideband mechanism (e.g., via someother communications channel), that identifies a speaker or indicates achange in speaker, and the electronic digital assistant operating at theelectronic computing device may use this information to distinguishspeakers.

Where the input audio signal includes multiple audio streamsrepresenting separate audio streams captured at separate input audiotransducers/microphones, any of the above-noted mechanisms set forthrelative to the single audio stream from a single transducer/microphonesource may be similarly used in this instance. Additionally oralternatively, the electronic digital assistant operating at theelectronic computing device may use information included in headers orembedded in the multiple audio streams consistent with the foregoingdescription for identifying and distinguishing speakers, such asinformation identifying a source device, a talker identifier, a sessionidentifier, a user identifier, an IP address, or some other identifier,to distinguish speakers. Other possibilities exist as well.

Process 400 then proceeds to step 406, where the electronic digitalassistant operating at the electronic computing device identifies afirst party of the multiple parties and identifies a role associatedwith the first party. Identifying the first party may include randomlyselecting one of the multiple speaking parties identified at step 404,or may include selecting a first sequential one of the multiple speakingparties identified at step 404 as a first party, among otherpossibilities.

In some examples, an absolute identity of the first party may bepossible, where the electronic digital assistant is able to uniquelyidentify the source of the speaker in the input audio signal eitherdirectly or indirectly via header information included in a header ofthe input audio signal or via embedded information embedded within theinput audio signal itself consistent with the foregoing description,among other possibilities. In embodiments in which the speaker isdirectly identified via one of the mechanisms set forth above, nofurther identification steps may be required at step 406 beyondextracting the speaker information from the input audio stream.

In embodiments in which the speaker is indirectly identified,information extracted from the input audio signal may be used tosubsequently obtain an absolute identity of the speaker. For example, anIP address extracted from the input audio signal identifying a sourcedevice that captured the audio may be cross-referenced against a userinformation database to identify an owner of the device andcorrespondingly identify the owner as the speaker. In other examples,audio snippets of the speaker may be provided to and cross-referencedagainst a database of voiceprints linked to absolute user identificationinformation and, finding a voiceprint match, may be used to identify thespeaker via the matching information. Other possibilities exist as well.

In other examples, an absolute identity of the first party (whetherdetermined directly or indirectly) may not be possible, such as wherethe electronic digital assistant is unable to (and/or is not required toor is not programmed to) uniquely identify the source of the speaker inthe input audio.

In such embodiments, the electronic digital assistant may assign arandom and/or arbitrary identifier (e.g., a random, pseudo-random, orsequential alphanumeric identifier newly generated for each new speaker,or a random, pseudo-random, or sequential selection from a pool ofavailable identifiers) to each separate one of the multiple speakingparties identified in step 404. Based on the method of identifying themultiple speaking parties at step 404, the electronic digital assistantmay attempt to match recurring speakers and use the same random and/orarbitrary identifier for the recurring portions of the speech determinedto be from a same relatively identified speaker.

Once the identity of the first party is identified, a role (e.g., a jobfunction, task assignment, position, rank, or responsibility, generallyor with respect to a particular incident, occurrence, commercialenterprise, location, time of day, and/or group of other party members)associated with the first party is identified at step 406. In someembodiments, the role associated with the first party may be provided inheaders associated with the input audio signal or embedded in the inputaudio signal itself in a same or similar manner to that set forth abovewith respect to identifying the first party, and role informationcorrespondingly extracted may be used to identify the role associatedwith the first party. For example, a device associated with a particularfirst party and stored with role information associated with theparticular first party may embed such information in any captured audio,which may then be provided to and extracted by the electronic digitalassistant at step 406.

In embodiments in which role information is not directly provided asabove, but where the first party is capable of being absolutelyidentified at step 406, identifying the role associated with the firstparty may include accessing a party identifier to role database, perhapsstored in an agency database on-premises at an agency location or at anagency database stored in a cloud computer cluster, and identify therole of the first party using the identity of the first party identifier(e.g., name, user ID, etc.) and the user to role database. The role ofthe first party may then be stored locally at the electronic computingdevice and used in subsequent steps of process 400.

If role information is not directly provided as above and where thefirst party is not capable of being absolutely identified as above, roleinformation may still be otherwise determined from a captured content ofthe input audio signal. For example, keywords extracted from the inputaudio signal may be matched against a database of keywords indicative ofthe first party having a particular role such as a patrol officer (e.g.,“arrest,” “perpetrator”, “suspect”, “dispatch”, “jurisdiction”, etc.) ora fireman (e.g., “fire,” “flashpoint,” “ladder truck,” “hose,” “oxygentank,” etc.). Similar keyword mechanisms could be used to identifysuspects, witnesses, other types of first responders, other types ofgovernment and enterprise security roles, and still other types of moregeneral roles. And still other keyword mechanisms could be used toidentify roles such as housekeeping, maintenance, front desk, and otherroles in a hospitality industry, or to identify roles such as driver,dispatcher, loader and other roles in a transportation industry. Inaddition to or in place of keyword-based mechanisms, natural languageprocessing mechanisms may be applied to process the input audio signaland determine an intent behind a content of the input audio signal andmap the determined intent to a corresponding role.

As another example, and where available, video analytics may be used ona received video provided contemporaneously with the input audio signalto identify a role associated with the first party. For example,lip-reading analytics or directional microphones could be used todetermine which party in a video is speaking, and match the speech withtime and/or location information associated with the input audio signal,to identify and match the first party in the input audio signal with thefirst party in the received video. Additional video analytics could thenbe used on the appearance and actions of the first party in the inputaudio signal to identify a role associated with the first party. As oneexample, a particular uniform or insignia worn by the first party andassociated with a particular role may be detected via video analyticsand used to identify a role of the first party (such as patrol officer,fireman, retail associated, retail manager, etc.). Other visualrole-identification mechanisms could be used as well.

Behavior and/or actions detected of one party or interactions betweentwo parties in the received video may also be used to assign role(s) aswell. For example, video capturing a first user placing a second user inrestraints such as handcuffs may be used to assign an officer role tothe party detected to be placing the restraints and a suspect role tothe other party receiving the restraints, or a uniformed retailassociate detected to be interacting with a non-uniformed or differentlyuniformed customer, store manager, warehouse, or delivery employee maybe used to assign corresponding roles. A determined location of thecamera capturing the received video or of the first and/or secondparties may additionally be used, perhaps in combination with thereceived video, to identify roles of the first and/or second parties.For example, if the camera and/or parties are determined to be locatedat a same location as a hotel, roles associated with a hotel may begiven higher priority or are more likely to be assigned relative toroles associated with locations of retail stores or other locations.

Additionally or alternatively, stored workflow information may be usedto assign role(s) as well. For example, types of incident assigned to aresponder and stored in a CAD database perhaps at dispatch console 158or cloud computer cluster 162 may be accessed and analyzed to determinean assigned role. Similarly, shift logs, assigned equipment,jurisdictional information, in-incident status information and/orupdates, and other stored workflow information stored in same or similarelectronic databases may be accessed and analyzed to determine anassigned role.

Process 400 then proceeds to step 408, where the electronic digitalassistant operating at the electronic computing device identifies asecond party of the multiple parties and identifies a role associatedwith the second party. Identifying the second party may include randomlyselecting one of the multiple speaking parties identified at step 404(but not already identified at step 406), or may include selecting asecond sequential one of the multiple speaking parties identified atstep 404 as a second party, among other possibilities.

The second party may be identified in much the same way as the firstparty set forth above with respect to step 406, and that description isnot repeated here, with the exception that the second party identifiedat step 408 must be a different party than that identified at step 406(e.g., distinguished via absolute identity as set forth above or viavoice parameter as set forth in step 404, or otherwise), but may have asame or different or overlapping role or roles as the first party.Furthermore, the role of the first party identified at step 406 may aidin identifying the role associated with the second party (e.g., once therole or roles of the first party are determined, a database of relatedroles may be used to narrow the likely role or roles of the second partyas a function of the role of the first party). Detected behaviors and/oractions between the first party and the second party may similarly aidin identifying the role associated with the second party. Referringagain to the example of an arresting officer, video of a first partyalready identified as an officer (via uniform or insignia) may limit theavailable roles to assign to the second party to roles relating toofficers (e.g., roles of parties that are likely to interact withofficers, such as witnesses, suspects, other officers, or commanders).And detected interactions indicative of relationships between the firstparty and the second party may be useful in identifying or limiting, forselection, a role or roles associated with the second party (e.g., thefirst party detected via video to be placing the second party inrestraints and/or detected via the input audio signal to use the phrase“you are under arrest” may imply that the second party is likely in asuspect role).

Subsequent to steps 406 and 408, process 400 proceeds to step 410, wherethe electronic digital assistant operating at the electronic computingdevice accesses a database of a plurality of multi-party interactiontemplates and selects, as a function of the identified roles of thefirst party and the second party, a particular multi-party interactiontemplate that matches the identified roles of the first and secondparties. Of course, process 400 is not limited to two parties, and insome embodiments, additional parties and roles may be identified duringprocess 400, and the database of multi-party interaction templates mayinclude templates for three or more roles as well.

As one example, the database may include public safety profiles for rolepairs including a first responder and witness role pair multi-partyinteraction template, a first responder and suspect role pairmulti-party interaction template, and a first responder and otherofficer role pair multi-party interaction template. Some incident basedmulti-party interaction templates may include, for example, all of theforegoing roles in a single multi-party interaction template when all ofthese roles are present in the input audio signal.

Additionally or alternatively, the database may include enterprise orcommercial profiles for role pairs including a retail associate andcustomer role pair multi-party interaction template, a retail associateand store manager role pair multi-party interaction template, a retailassociate and warehouse role pair multi-party interaction template, anda retail associate and delivery role pair multi-party interactiontemplate. Other examples are possible as well.

The multi-party interaction templates may include any of several varioustypes of information for classifying, refining, and/or extractingcommunications between identified parties and their corresponding rolesfrom the input audio signal. As one example, each multi-partyinteraction template may include keywords or intents associated witheach identified role in a relationship represented by the multi-partyinteraction template. Each keyword or intent may be associated withextracting relatively higher priority or relatively more usefulinformation for that keyword/role/relationship/interaction compared toother information included in the input audio signal. Keywords andintents, and surrounding contextual terms from the input audio signal,may be used for identifying key information for use in the generating ofa database query in subsequent steps.

Additionally or alternatively, each multi-party interaction template mayinclude an indication of a trustworthiness of information emanating fromeach party (based on role) identified in the multi-party interactiontemplate. Information identified as having high trustworthiness (e.g.,perhaps associated with parties having an officer, teacher, or managerrole) may be treated as true for the purposes of subsequent steps, andmay not be separately verified. On the other hand, informationidentified as having low trustworthiness (e.g., perhaps associated withparties having a suspect, student, or customer role) may be treated ashaving suspect trustworthiness and may be subsequently and automaticallyvalidated in subsequent steps prior to being relied upon (if ever reliedupon).

Additionally or alternatively, each multi-party interaction template mayinclude an indication of which party (based on role) a database queryresult generated in subsequent steps should be ultimately provided backto. For example, in an officer/suspect multi-party interaction template,information derived from automatically generated database queries may betargeted for delivery, as identified in the correspondingofficer/suspect multi-party interaction template, back to the officeralone and not to the suspect. As another example, in a retailassociate/customer multi-party interaction template, information derivedfrom automatically generated database queries may be targeted fordelivery, as identified in the corresponding retail associate/customermulti-party interaction template, back to both the retail associate andthe customer. Other examples are possible as well, and other types ofinformation could be included in the multi-party interaction templates.

Different multi-party interaction templates, while having some overlapbetween different combinations of roles, are likely to include differentkeywords, different levels of trustworthiness, and/or different deliverypreferences between them, and thus be different from one another in atleast some aspects.

Process 400 then proceeds to step 412, where the electronic digitalassistant operating at the electronic computing device automatically(e.g., without manual user intervention) generates, based on a detectedcontent of the input audio signal and the selected particularmulti-party interaction template, a database query to retrieveinformation responsive to or supplemental to detected content of theinput audio signal.

For example, the generated database query could be a public orenterprise safety query of a public of enterprise safety database (orlegal, human resources, or any other type of database) for one of aname, physical attribute, address, birth date, vehicle ownership,property ownership, or past criminal activity associated with a personor entity mentioned in the input audio signal. As a further example, thegenerated database query could be a commercial query of one of apersonal name, product name attribute, product location, service name orattribute, store address, sale date, sale price, sale discount, rebateamount, or task status associated with a person or entity mentioned inthe input audio signal.

The particular query generated at step 412 and/or the particulardatabase to which it is directed is determined as a function of contentof the input audio signal (e.g., information included in the input audiosignal in the form of a question or statement) and contents of theselected particular multi-party interaction template. For example, wherethe selected particular multi-party interaction template includesparticular keywords or intents associated with the roles to which theselected particular multi-party interaction template relates, thegenerated database query and the database to which it is directed may becreated as a function of the keyword, intent, surrounding context fromthe input audio signal, and/or role-specific parameters orcharacteristics stored in the selected particular multi-partyinteraction template.

As one example, where a keyword in a retail associate and customermulti-party interaction template includes a name of a product associatedwith a place of business with which the retail associated is employed,such as a “MotoTrbo Radio,” the detection of the keyword in the inputaudio signal may cause a database query to be automatically generated toone of a number of product or location-based databases, and theparticular query and/or target database may vary depending on thekeyword itself, context or other terms surrounding the keyword andextracted from the input audio signal along with the keyword, and/or theidentity/role of the party to speak the keyword.

As one further example, where an intent in a retail associate andcustomer multi-party interaction template includes an intent todetermine a stock level of a particular product, the detection of theintent in the input audio signal may cause a database query to beautomatically generated to one of a number of product or location-baseddatabases for the named product, and the particular query and/or targetdatabase may vary depending on context or other terms surrounding theintent and extracted from the input audio signal along with the intent,and/or the identity/role of the party to speak the intent.

As one further example, the query generated at step 412 may beresponsive to an explicit question voiced by the retail associate orcustomer and captured in the input audio signal. For example, the retailassociate may ask, “What is the current stock level of the MotoTrboRadio?” A corresponding query generated at step 412 may responsivelyrequest a current stock level via a product stock-level database usingthe keyword “MotoTrbo Radio” extracted from the input audio signal. Orthe customer may ask, “What aisle can I find the MotoTrbo Radios?” Acorresponding query generated at step 412 may thus request a currentaisle location via a store location database using the keyword “MotoTrboRadio” extracted from the input audio signal.

In other examples, the query generated may be supplemental to anexplicit question or statement voiced by the retail associate orcustomer and captured in the input audio signal. For example, thecustomer may ask, “What are the current features of the MotoTrbo Radio?”A corresponding query generated at step 412 may request a current stocklevel via a product stock-level database using the keyword “MotoTrboRadio” extracted from the input audio signal in order to provide theretail associate with stock level information to supplement the retailassociate's answer to the customer's direct question regarding productfeatures.

Independent of whether the query is generated in response to or as asupplement to a question or statement from one of the parties, and asset forth earlier, the query generated at step 412 may further depend onwho (e.g., which one of the multiple parties included in the multi-partyinteraction template) is determined to have spoken a particular keywordincluded in the template or spoken a particular intent matching a storedintent included in the template.

For example, where “MotoTrbo Radio” is a stored keyword in the templateand is determined to have been voiced by the retail associate, thedatabase query generated at step 412 may be an inventory status query ofan inventory database using the product name (and as configured via theretail associate and customer multi-party interaction template). If, onthe other hand, the customer is determined to have spoken the “MotoTrboRadio” keyword, the database query may instead be a product locationquery of a product location database using the product name (asconfigured via the retail associate and customer multi-party interactiontemplate including the “MotoTrbo Radio” keyword). Similar variations canbe applied to spoken intents as well.

Where the selected particular multi-party interaction template alsoincludes particular roles having higher or lower trustworthinessfactors, information detected from a party having a lowertrustworthiness factor (as set forth in the multi-party interactiontemplate) may automatically trigger a database query to confirm theaccuracy of information captured and extracted from the input audiosignal, while information detected from a party having a highertrustworthiness factor may be treated as likely accurate and may notautomatically trigger a similar database query.

Using the example above of a retail setting in which a “MotoTrbo Radio”product is mentioned, if the input audio signal indicates the customervoicing a question about a price, stock level, or location of a“MotoFast Radio”, at step 412 and using a corresponding retailassociate/customer multi-party interaction template that includesassigned higher and lower trustworthiness factors respectively assignedto the retail associate and the customer, the query automaticallygenerated at step 412 may be based on a low trustworthiness factorassigned to the customer and may be generated to confirm that there isactually a product called MotoFast Radio, and to locate other similarlyspelled product names that the customer may be likely trying to refer toinstead. Accordingly, the query generated at step 412 may be directed toa product name database using the query term “MotoFast Radio,” and if itis determined that the customer is more likely referring to a MotoTrboRadio, may also perform a subsequent query using the modified productname “MotoTrbo.”

If, on the other hand, the input audio signal indicates the retailassociate asking about a price, stock level, or location of a “MotoFastRadio”, at step 412 and using the same corresponding retailassociate/customer multi-party interaction template, no query may begenerated at step 412, or in some embodiments, a query may beautomatically generated at step 412 based on a high trustworthinessfactor assigned to the retail associate and may be generated to confirma corresponding price, stock level, or location of a product calledMotoFast Radio (even though that product may be much less popular, atlower stock, or rarer than the MotoTrbo Radio). Accordingly, the querygenerated at step 412 may be directed to a different database (e.g., aproduct status database) using the same query term “MotoFast Radio.”

Process 400 then proceeds to step 414, where the electronic digitalassistant operating at the electronic computing device causes thedatabase query to be performed (e.g., causes the query generated at step412 to be provided to the proper corresponding database) and results ofthe query (received in response to the query provided to the propercorresponding database) to be provided to one or more of the firstparty, the second party, an administrator or dispatcher associated withthe first or second party, and a computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) systemassociated with the first or second party (among potentially othertargets as set forth in the multi-party interaction template).

By default, and if not otherwise specified, results of the query may beprovided to all parties associated with the particular multi-partyinteraction template that are reachable (e.g., a network path isidentified to reach each party). In other embodiments, results of thequery may be provided to an administrator or dispatcher by default (suchas a dispatcher associated with dispatch console 158 or an administratorproviding an administrative or information dispersion function for thefirst or second parties or other parties associated with the first orsecond parties), who may optionally provide an additional filteringfunction and determine which query results to forward on to the one ormore targets identified above. In still further embodiments, results ofthe query may be provided to a computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system forstorage or further distribution via a CAD operator.

In some instances, the particular multi-party interaction template mayspecify that query responses should be routed only to certain partiesbased on that party's role. For example, using the retailassociate/customer examples set forth above, the retailassociate/customer multi-party interaction template may specify that allquery responses, whether generated by customer or retail associateportions of the input audio signal, should always be provided to theretail associate alone. As another example, where the multi-partyinteraction template is associated with one or more first responders andone or more non-first-responders, the multi-party interaction templatemay indicate that results of any query are to be provided to the one ormore first-responders and not to the one or more non-first-responders.Other examples and combinations are possible as well

In other instances, the particular multi-party interaction template mayspecify that queries generated due to a particular keyword or intentmatch may go to a particular identified subset of all parties (includinga single party) associated with the particular multi-party interactiontemplate (which may vary based on the keyword or intent and/or based oncontext surrounding the keyword or intent), may specify that queriesgenerated due to an associated low (relative to a threshold, or lowerrelative to other trustworthiness factor(s) in the multi-partyinteraction template) trustworthiness factor may go to either the partyassociated with the low trustworthiness factor or to one or more otherparties in the multi-party interaction template with relatively highertrustworthiness factors (including the party with a highesttrustworthiness factor), or may specify other possibilities.

In one embodiment, and returning to the example set forth above, wherethe retail associate may ask, “What is the current stock level of theMotoTrbo Radio?,” the retail associate/customer multi-party interactiontemplate may specify that query responses for queries relating toproduct-related stock levels initiated by retail associates are providedback to only the party with the retail associate role and not to theparty with the customer role as set forth in the multi-party interactiontemplate.

As another example, where the customer asks “What aisle can I find theMotoTrbo Radios?,” the retail associate and customer multi-partyinteraction template may specify that query responses for queriesrelating to product locations initiated by customers are provided backto only the party with the retail associate role and not to the partywith the customer role as set forth in the multi-party interactiontemplate, or may specify that query responses for queries relating toproduct locations initiated by customers are provided back to both theretail associate role party and to the customer role party as set forthin the multi-party interaction template.

As a still further example, where the input audio signal indicates acustomer voicing a question about a price, stock level, or location of a“MotoFast Radio”, and where the corresponding retail associate/customermulti-party interaction template that includes assigned higher and lowertrustworthiness factors respectively assigned to the retail associateand the customer, the retail associate/customer multi-party interactiontemplate itself may specify, or some separate mapping that sets forththreshold levels of trustworthiness to be identified as a target to beprovided the query response at step 414, the query results may beprovided to all parties or may only be provided to the retail associateparty assigned the higher (or highest, or threshold level)trustworthiness factor.

Once the targets of the query results are identified, the electronicdigital assistant operating at the electronic computing device causesthe query results to be provided to the identified targets. For example,the electronic digital assistant may compose a text message response, ane-mail response, or an instant message response, and provide the queryresults to the identified targets by providing the composed text messageresponse, e-mail response, or instant message response to a text messageserver, e-mail server, or instant message server accompanying identitiesof the identified targets (or a group identifier therefore) for furtherdistribution of the results to the identified targets. The received textmessage, e-mail, or instant message could then be displayed or playedback (e.g., via a text-to-voice feature) at each receiving target deviceaccording to each target device's configuration.

In still other embodiments, the electronic digital assistant operatingat the electronic computing device may request one or more narrowband orbroadband voice channels from a PTT controller, zone controller, or thelike that connects with the identified targets, and may provide thequery results to the identified targets via the one or more establishedvoice channels (e.g., perhaps via a voice-to-text playback of generatedquery results provided over multiple private/unicast calls or over asingle multicast/talkgroup call established with the identified targets,among other possibilities) using any one or more of the broadband andnarrowband applications or protocols set forth earlier.

For example, if a talkgroup exists but is not active, the electronicdigital assistant operating at the electronic computing device mayrequest an active voice channel and the floor, and once granted, providethe generated query results. On the other hand, if a voice channel isalready assigned to the talkgroup but the electronic digital assistantis not currently granted the floor (e.g., permission to talk), theelectronic digital assistant may request the floor and, once granted,provide the generated query results. Other examples are possible aswell.

In still other embodiments, the results of the database query at step414 may produce media other than text, such as image, graphics, orvideo, which may be provided to the same one or more targets as alreadydiscussed above in a same or similar manner to that discussed above, butwhich may also be delivered by providing a uniform resource locator(URL) link that, once activated, allows the receiving device to retrievethe corresponding image, graphics, or video. In still furtherembodiments, the results of the database query at step 414 may be aninstruction to perform a function, such as changing a radio to aparticular channel or to a particular talkgroup, to increase or decreasea volume of the radio, to report a current location, or perform someother function.

3. Conclusion

In accordance with the foregoing, an improved device, method, and systemis disclosed for an electronic digital assistant to computationallyprocess captured multi-party voice dialog and generate a query andprovide a response to, or supplemental information for, the capturedmulti-party voice dialog as a function of an electronically storedmulti-party voice-interaction template.

As a result of the foregoing, and in some embodiments, electronicdigital assistants may computationally consider and provide assistancewithin multiple party conversations digitally captured and processed bythe electronic digital assistant, allowing electronic digital assistantto provide more substantive responses that consider additional contextand inter-party and role-based information compared to traditionalsingle-person inquiries and responses processed by conventionalelectronic digital assistants, and without requiring large memory spacesand processing power required to store every possible situation andresponse, and without requiring large datasets and time-consumingtraining periods required by deep-learning and other machine learningmechanisms. Other features and advantages are possible as well.

In the foregoing specification, specific embodiments have beendescribed. However, one of ordinary skill in the art appreciates thatvarious modifications and changes can be made without departing from thescope of the invention as set forth in the claims below. Accordingly,the specification and figures are to be regarded in an illustrativerather than a restrictive sense, and all such modifications are intendedto be included within the scope of present teachings. The benefits,advantages, solutions to problems, and any element(s) that may cause anybenefit, advantage, or solution to occur or become more pronounced arenot to be construed as a critical, required, or essential features orelements of any or all the claims. The invention is defined solely bythe appended claims including any amendments made during the pendency ofthis application and all equivalents of those claims as issued.

Moreover in this document, relational terms such as first and second,top and bottom, and the like may be used solely to distinguish oneentity or action from another entity or action without necessarilyrequiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between suchentities or actions. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “has”,“having,” “includes”, “including,” “contains”, “containing” or any othervariation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, suchthat a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises, has,includes, contains a list of elements does not include only thoseelements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherentto such process, method, article, or apparatus. An element proceeded by“comprises . . . a”, “has . . . a”, “includes . . . a”, “contains . . .a” does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence ofadditional identical elements in the process, method, article, orapparatus that comprises, has, includes, contains the element. The terms“a” and “an” are defined as one or more unless explicitly statedotherwise herein. The terms “substantially”, “essentially”,“approximately”, “about” or any other version thereof, are defined asbeing close to as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, and inone non-limiting embodiment the term is defined to be within 10%, inanother embodiment within 5%, in another embodiment within 1% and inanother embodiment within 0.5%. The term “coupled” as used herein isdefined as connected, although not necessarily directly and notnecessarily mechanically. A device or structure that is “configured” ina certain way is configured in at least that way, but may also beconfigured in ways that are not listed.

It will be appreciated that some embodiments may be comprised of one ormore generic or specialized processors (or “processing devices”) such asmicroprocessors, digital signal processors, customized processors andfield programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and unique stored programinstructions (including both software and firmware) that control the oneor more processors to implement, in conjunction with certainnon-processor circuits, some, most, or all of the functions of themethod and/or apparatus described herein. Alternatively, some or allfunctions could be implemented by a state machine that has no storedprogram instructions, or in one or more application specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), in which each function or some combinations of certainof the functions are implemented as custom logic. Of course, acombination of the two approaches could be used.

Moreover, an embodiment can be implemented as a computer-readablestorage medium having computer readable code stored thereon forprogramming a computer (e.g., comprising a processor) to perform amethod as described and claimed herein. Examples of suchcomputer-readable storage mediums include, but are not limited to, ahard disk, a CD-ROM, an optical storage device, a magnetic storagedevice, a ROM (Read Only Memory), a PROM (Programmable Read OnlyMemory), an EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory), an EEPROM(Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) and a Flashmemory. Further, it is expected that one of ordinary skill,notwithstanding possibly significant effort and many design choicesmotivated by, for example, available time, current technology, andeconomic considerations, when guided by the concepts and principlesdisclosed herein will be readily capable of generating such softwareinstructions and programs and ICs with minimal experimentation.

The Abstract of the Disclosure is provided to allow the reader toquickly ascertain the nature of the technical disclosure. It issubmitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpretor limit the scope or meaning of the claims. In addition, in theforegoing Detailed Description, it can be seen that various features aregrouped together in various embodiments for the purpose of streamliningthe disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted asreflecting an intention that the claimed embodiments require morefeatures than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as thefollowing claims reflect, inventive subject matter lies in less than allfeatures of a single disclosed embodiment. Thus the following claims arehereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with each claimstanding on its own as a separately claimed subject matter.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for tailoring an electronic digitalassistant generated query as a function of a captured multi-party voicedialog and an electronically stored multi-party voice-interactiontemplate, the method comprising: monitoring, at an electronic processingdevice, an input audio signal; determining, by the electronic processingdevice, that the input audio signal includes audio from multiplespeaking parties; identifying, by the electronic processing device, afirst party of the multiple parties and identifying a first roleassociated with the first party; identifying, by the electronicprocessing device, a second party of the multiple parties andidentifying a second role associated with the second party; accessing,by the electronic processing device, a database of a plurality ofmulti-party interaction templates and selecting, as a function of theidentified roles of the first party and the second party, a particularmulti-party interaction template from the plurality of multi-partyinteraction templates that matches the identified roles of the firstparty and the second party; generating, by the electronic processingdevice based on a detected content of the input audio signal and theselected particular multi-party interaction template, a database queryto retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to the detectedcontent of the input audio signal; and causing, by the electronicprocessing device, the database query to be performed and causing, bythe electronic processing device, results of the query to be provided toone or more of the first party, the second party, a dispatcher oradministrator associated with the first or second parties, and acomputer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system associated with the first or secondparties wherein identifying the first role of the first party comprisesreceiving an indication of the first role of the first party from amobile communications device associated with the first party; andwherein identifying the second role of the second party comprisesdetermining a relationship between the first party and the second party,as a function of the identified first role of the first party and thedetected content of the input audio signal, and identifying the secondrole of the second party as a function of the determined relationship.2. The method of claim 1, wherein the mobile communication deviceassociated with the first party also provides the input audio signal tothe electronic processing device.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein theidentified first role of the first party is a first responder role, andthe identified second role of the second party is one of a witness,suspect, and other officer role.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein theplurality of multi-party interaction templates includes profiles forrole pairs including a first responder and witness role pair multi-partyinteraction template, a first responder and suspect role pairmulti-party interaction template, and a first responder and otherofficer role pair multi-party interaction template.
 5. The method ofclaim 4, wherein each multi-party interaction template includes thekeywords or intents associated with the relationship between the partiesand their roles represented by the multi-party interaction template foridentifying key information for use in the generating of the databasequery.
 6. The method of claim 3, wherein the database query is one of aname, physical attribute, address, birth date, vehicle ownership,property ownership, or past criminal activity associated with a personor entity mentioned in the input audio signal.
 7. The method of claim 1,wherein each multi-party interaction template includes an the indicationof the trustworthiness of information emanating from each partyidentified in the multi-party interaction template.
 8. The method ofclaim 7, wherein particular information received in the input audiosignal and assigned, via a particular associated multi-party interactiontemplate, a low indication of trustworthiness, causes an electronicdigital assistant query to be automatically generated to an associatedinformation database requesting confirmation of the particularinformation.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein each multi-partyinteraction template includes the indication of which party in themulti-party interaction template results of the query should be providedto.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein when the particular multi-partyinteraction template is associated with one or more first responders andone or more non-first-responders, the particular multi-party interactiontemplate indicating that results of the query are to be provided to theone or more first-responders and not to the one or morenon-first-responders.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein the results ofthe query are provided to one or both of the first and second partiesvia a text message, e-mail, or instant message.
 12. The method of claim1, wherein the results of the query are provided to one or both of thefirst and second parties via a text-to-voice response provided via atalkgroup call.
 13. The method of claim 1, wherein the identified firstrole of the first party is a retail associate role, and the identifiedsecond role of the second party is one of a customer, store manager,warehouse, and delivery role.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein theplurality of multi-party interaction templates includes profiles forrole pairs including a retail associate and customer role pairmulti-party interaction template, a retail associate and store managerrole pair multi-party interaction template, a retail associate andwarehouse role pair multi-party interaction template, and a retailassociate and delivery role pair multi-party interaction template. 15.The method of claim 1, wherein the database query is one of a productname, inventory status, product price, sale or discount, associateschedule, and task status associated with a person or entity mentionedin the input audio signal.
 16. A method for tailoring an electronicdigital assistant generated query as a function of a capturedmulti-party voice dialog and an electronically stored multi-partyvoice-interaction template, the method comprising: monitoring, at anelectronic processing device, an input audio signal; determining, by theelectronic processing device, that the input audio signal includes audiofrom multiple speaking parties; identifying, by the electronicprocessing device, a first party of the multiple parties and identifyinga first role associated with the first party; identifying, by theelectronic processing device, a second party of the multiple parties andidentifying a second role associated with the second party; accessing,by the electronic processing device, a database of a plurality ofmulti-party interaction templates and selecting, as a function of theidentified roles of the first party and the second party, a particularmulti-party interaction template from the plurality of multi-partyinteraction templates that matches the identified roles of the firstparty and the second party; generating, by the electronic processingdevice based on a detected content of the input audio signal and theselected particular multi-party interaction template, a database queryto retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to the detectedcontent of the input audio signal; and causing, by the electronicprocessing device, the database query to be performed and causing, bythe electronic processing device, results of the query to be provided toone or more of the first party, the second party, a dispatcher oradministrator associated with the first or second parties, and acomputer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system associated with the first or secondparties wherein identifying the first role of the first party or thesecond role of the second party comprises applying video analytics to acaptured video of the first party and the second party, determining, viathe video analytics, a relationship between the first party and thesecond party, and identifying the first role of the first party or thesecond role of the second party as a function of the determinedrelationship.
 17. The method of claim 16, further comprising receiving,at the electronic processing device, an indication of a location atwhich the first and the second parties are located, and further usingthe indicated location along with the video analytics to determine therelationship between the first party and the second party and toidentify the first role of the first party or the second role of thesecond party as a function of the determined relationship.
 18. Anelectronic processing device for tailoring an electronic digitalassistant generated query as a function of a captured multi-party voicedialog and an electronically stored multi-party voice-interactiontemplate, the device comprising: a memory; a transceiver; and one ormore processors configured to: monitor an input audio signal; determinethat the input audio signal includes audio from multiple speakingparties; identify a first party of the multiple parties and identify afirst role associated with the first party by receiving an indication ofthe first role of the first party from a mobile communications deviceassociated with the first party; identify a second party of the multipleparties and identifying a second role associated with the second partyby determining a relationship between the first party and the secondparty, as a function of the identified first role of the first party andthe detected content of the input audio signal, and identifying thesecond role of the second party as a function of the determinedrelationship; access, via a local electronic storage or via thetransceiver, a database of a plurality of multi-party interactiontemplates and select, as a function of the identified roles of the firstparty and the second party, a particular multi-party interactiontemplate from the plurality of multi-party interaction templates thatmatches the identified roles of the first party and the second party;generate, based on a detected content of the input audio signal and theselected particular multi-party interaction template, a database queryto retrieve information responsive to or supplemental to the detectedcontent of the input audio signal; and cause the database query to beperformed and cause, via the transceiver, results of the query to beprovided to one or more of the first party, the second party, adispatcher or administrator associated with the first or second parties,and a computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system associated with the first orsecond parties.